Soft proofing spot colour build ups?

Hi all, I need to build up a series of patterns from 2 spot colours.
The designer has specified 2 PMS colours - one for the lighter regions and one for the darker regions. But in the build up, the dark areas will not knock out the base colour. So I'm trying my best to find a PMS which will match the dark colour when it's overprinting the lighter one.
Photoshop gives me the option to specify the solidity of the ink in the preview - but I dont really know how opaque the ink will be. In your experience do the previews at 50% solidity preview fairly accurately - or is it best to preview at 0% solidity?
I'm assuming using a wider colour space when on screen previeing won't help me here either?
Wet proofs are not an option at this stage. So, Id like to use my on-screen preview to get at least close to the final result. Does anyone have any tips on this?
Many thanks.
R

I hoped someone would know by having hands-on experience of this, clearly. Someone who works with printing inks rather than pixels.
Photoshop gives me the option to preview at different solidity settings – what's most common? Are darker inks more dense and therefore more opaque (meaning I should preview at a higher solidity). Or is the reverse true.
From my youth I remember oil paint having wildly different transparency from colour to colour due to the different constituent parts - is this true of PMS colours also?

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